UK Championship - Day 6

06:21:00
Ramona Dragomir
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Another wonderful day for snooker! After a pretty difficult and hazy start, I dare in saying that this UK Championship it’s going to be a blast. With every match that takes place snooker is one step further to reaching its old time glory as the players due it honor and hit those balls beautifully. And when that happens a true fan of this sport can be genuinely happy and hope for the best.Yesterday we had the last quarter-finals matches, two to be more precise, matches that had entertained us all day long.

In the commentary box two great legends (Willie Thorne and John Virgo) were ready to follow every move made by ”The Magician" Shaun Murphy and " The Thunder from Down Under" Neil Robertson. And there was going to be plenty of movement around that snooker table! :-))The first session started with Neil rushing in and winning the first two frames by hitting a top 64 break, only to see a beautiful comeback signed by Shaun with breaks of 70 and 75. Things were as tight as they can be and they continued being so, for the session ended up on a 4-4 scoreline.In the evening you would be tempted to think that maybe one of them broke the ice and took the lead immediately. Well, no! At least not immediately, as the boys kept on sharing frames - Murphy hit some magical breaks of 93, 50 and 72, while Robbo stormed in a 90 and a wonderful 120.

The Magician reached the semis after defeating a force of nature-The Thunder

And here we were 7-7 a true battle of snooker titans, a battle that was going to be won by Murphy as he hit a 49 and a series of 24 and 22 to make the scoreline 9-7. Wonderfully played! Both players were fantastic and it was such a pleasure to watch them play.

The second match, commentated by Ken Doherty and Dennis Taylor, was a "Marks match", meaning that Mark Williams took on Mark Joyce. A good old champ was meeting some fresh meat :-)) and that could only mean more great snooker! ;-)The first session saw "The Welsh Potting Machine" taking the lead...but what a lead!!! He won the first four frames although he didn’t hit too many big breaks, only a 55 and a 43, but he took the first step, and it was a huge one. All of the sudden, Joyce woke up and started hitting those balls in the right pockets to make the most spectacular comeback of this tournament as he fired in breaks of 102, 91 and 32 in order to drew the first session 4-4.

The Welsh Potting Machine seems to be back in business

On their second encounter, Williams regain a bit of his Welsh strength as he made it past the 50 limit (for a break I mean) and hit some pretty good breaks of 55, 71 and 56 which received as a response the biggest break of this tournament - an amazing 143 signed by Joyce. As in the previous match, things got pretty tight as the frames were shared between the players and also things got stuck at 7-7. This just might be the magical score, as it was present in all the quarter-finals matches and it always meant the point from which a player will take over and win. In our case the one who took the lead and finally won the match was Mark Williams who secured his victory with an 82 break. Final score: 9-7.It was a very good match, even if Williams still seems to be struggling in being fluent while potting those balls but in the end we’ve all witnessed Joyce’s huge potential (this kid could be the new name in snooker) ;-)

The first semi-final will kick off today, so fingers crossed for your favorite player!